The monitoring of bodily parameters within a body, such as fluid pressure in a urinary bladder of a human, is an important tool for medical research and clinical diagnosis. For example, fluid pressure within a urinary bladder is useful in diagnosing the cause of urinary incontinence. Urinary bladder over-activity or urge incontinence is generally due to a urinary bladder that contracts too much or at inappropriate times and, thus, is often associated with elevated fluid pressure levels within the urinary bladder. Stress incontinence, on the other hand, is generally due to a sphincter that does not stay sufficiently closed or opens at inappropriate times and, thus, is often associated with normal fluid pressure levels within the urinary bladder. In order to design an effective treatment strategy, it is critical to evaluate the cause of the incontinence so that therapy can be appropriately directed, for example, towards the urinary bladder or the sphincter. Therefore, systems, apparatus, and methods for measuring bodily parameters within a body of a human are useful.
Typically, to measure fluid pressure within a body, an implantable device is inserted into the body for the purpose of measuring pressure therein. The implantable device obtains fluid pressure measurements and transfers the pressure measurements to an external device for recording and/or display, for example, on a monitor or on paper. In existing devices, such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,319,208 to Abita et. al. entitled TELEMETRIC IN VIVO BLADDER URINE MONITOR SYSTEM and U.S. Pat. No. 6,409,674 to Brockway et al. entitled IMPLANTABLE SENSOR WITH WIRELESS COMMUNICATION, the implantable device must be within communication distance of the external device in order to capture pressure readings. Accordingly, the mobility of a patient in which the implantable device is inserted is encumbered by the mobility of the external device.
Accordingly, methods, systems, and apparatus are needed to measure bodily parameters such as fluid pressure within a body of an animal that are not subject to the above limitation. The present invention fulfills this need among others.